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Poll: Scandals hurt Obama in Iowa

DES MOINES -- Iowans dislike the work President Barack Obama is doing, a new Des Moines Register Iowa Poll shows. The Democrat has long struggled to impress Iowans with his governing abilities — his job.

The Democrat has long struggled to impress Iowans with his governing abilities — his job approval rating has been underwater for the better part of the last 3½ years — but in recent weeks he has confronted a constant barrage of crises and relentless criticism about overreaching and arrogance.

Seven months after Iowans rallied behind Obama to help ensure his re-election, 54 percent disapprove of the job he's doing as president. That's his worst rating in Iowa in his 4½ years in office.

"That says to me the scandals are taking a hit," said J. Ann Selzer, the Iowa Poll's director.

A heavy majority of Iowans say three recent controversies are a concern — the way the Obama administration handled its talking points about the attack on a U.S. consulate in Benghazi in which four Americans were killed; the Internal Revenue Service giving extra scrutiny to conservative groups that applied for nonprofit status; and the U.S. Justice Department looking at phone records for reporters at the Associated Press and Fox News. Polling concluded before revelations that government surveillance programs are scooping up massive amounts of phone and Internet data.

Sixty percent of Iowa adults believe the nation is on the wrong track.

And when asked about Obama specifically, Iowans' opinions are chilly on every topic tested.

A majority don't like Obama's strategies for dealing with the budget deficit (64 percent disapprove) or the economy (58 percent disapprove).

And 57 percent disapprove of the way Obama is managing relationships with the U.S. Congress.

"President Obama is a campaign phenomenon. He knows how to win elections, and that's all he knows how to do," said GOP strategist David Kochel, who was Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's top Iowa adviser.

Kochel predicted that the poll foreshadows trouble for Democratic candidates in the 2014 election. Obama's Iowa victory gave Democrats here a false sense of confidence, he said.

"They think it's a magic formula, but the 2012 election was all about Obama and his uniqueness," Kochel said. "They misinterpret all that stuff and think that everyone's in love with Democratic policies. They're not."

"Iowans, like the rest of the nation, are frustrated with inaction and bickering in Washington," he said.

But with 1 1/2 years until the next election, Anderson said, any predictions are "incredibly premature."

"Remember, in February 2012, President Obama was getting beat by Mitt Romney, and NBC moved Iowa to a 'lean Republican' state, and nine months later he won re-election," said Anderson, who is now running for statewide office himself as a secretary of state candidate.

The poll of 809 Iowa adults was conducted June 2-5 by Selzer & Co. of Des Moines. It has a margin of error of 3.4 percentage points.

The frustration with Obama stands in stark contrast to Iowans' feelings about the state of their state.

Results of this poll had Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad and his Republican advisers doing a happy dance — he gets a job approval rating of 58 percent, his all-time high for this term. A sanguine 56 percent majority think the state is on the right track.

At a time when political factions nationally are so at odds with each other, many Iowans believe Branstad and the split-control Iowa Legislature deserve credit equally for teaming up to make headway.

Independent voter Scott Scherer, a 44-year-old chiropractor from Guttenberg, thinks Iowa is on the right track, but the nation is on the wrong track.

In the federal government, "everybody's at everybody's throats. Everything's hyper-politicized," Scherer said. "If you're a true leader, you take responsibility. But everybody's pointing fingers of blame at somebody."

Obama was widely popular in Iowa when he took office in 2009. At that time, 68 percent of Iowans approved of the new president.

The president's approval ticked downward after that, dropping each time the Register polled, until he saw a slight rebound to 48 percent in February 2011 after his agreement with the new Republican majority in the U.S. House to extend tax cuts.

His job approval rating grew more dismal after that, however, and Republicans spied opportunity in Iowa to take him out.

Amid a gush of advertising and Air Force One visits just before the general election, the president's approval climbed to majority territory, at 51 percent. And on election night, Obama bested GOP challenger Mitt Romney 52 percent to 46.2 percent in Iowa.

Post-election, Obama's job approval rating inched down again, hitting 49 percent in February this year. Now it's down another 8 percentage points to 41 percent.

Democrat Steve Vann, a retired teacher from Fort Madison, said he was watching someone on TV talk about the government's electronic surveillance programs when the Des Moines Register called to ask why he told the Iowa Poll that the AP and Fox phone records controversy is a major concern.

"My No. 1 concern right now probably is the government's invasion of our privacy," said Vann, 61. "I want us to be protected, and I certainly want them to conduct surveillance, but I think we need some more information about exactly what they are doing in that process."

Sixty-two percent of Iowa adults are concerned about the way the U.S. Justice Department subpoenaed reporters' phone call logs to help identify the government officials who leaked confidential information in two separate cases. Thirty-seven percent of Iowans say it's a major concern; 25 percent believe it's a minor concern. But 29 percent say the phone records scandal is overblown. Nine percent aren't sure.

The controversy that resonates most strongly with Iowans among the three tested centers on the fatal attack in Benghazi last Sept. 11. It's more than just a Twitter phenomenon or a topic of angry chatter among Republican activists; it's a major concern to 52 percent of Iowans.

Even among Democrats, half think the controversy over the way the Obama administration initially failed to disclose the involvement of terrorism is either a major or minor concern. And 67 percent of Iowa independents and 87 percent of Republicans are concerned to some level. A quarter of all Iowa adults think the Benghazi scandal is overblown.

The revelation that IRS agents had been targeting conservative and tea party groups for extra scrutiny concerns 67 percent of all Iowa adults. Forty-five percent say it's a major deal; 22 percent think it's a minor concern.